


of dog food and strangers

by cultjoon



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Slow Romance, i gave their dogs different names because idk, petstore au, they're both dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2020-08-19 17:51:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20213842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cultjoon/pseuds/cultjoon
Summary: Kris has a dog. Tao works in a pet store. Kris tries to be funny and it falls flat, and the next several weeks are spent living in a bad rom com.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so uh, i know i've been mia for a really long time, but like, here's some taoris fluff to make up for it.

Kris stood in the shower, hot water pelting him in the face, thinking about how much of a fucking idiot he was.   
Kris could hear his dog scratching at the door, because he had been in the shower hating himself for the better part of an hour, and Trixie got upset if he went anywhere without her for longer than ten minutes. 

If he didn't have a dog in the first place, he never would have been put in this position. 

Kris sighed. It wasn't Trixie's fault he was an idiot. All he had gone in for was dog food. Just one simple thing. How can you fuck up getting dog food?   
But there was an attractive guy working the cash register and when he smiled Kris felt his heartbeat skip and he forgot what he came in for. What did he come in for again? He was too busy looking at the cashier, with his pretty dark eyes and a customer-service smile that made you feel like he actually cared about what brand of medicine your dog needed for its worms.  
Right. Dog food.   
He blindly grabbed a bag and took in a deep breath. He headed to the cash and the clerk made eye contact and Kris forgot how to function.   
I have to impress this guy, Kris thought. And he could impress him by being funny, right? Wasn't "a good sense of humour" the first thing people looked for in anyone else?   
"A horse walks into a bar..."  
The sentence travels approximately two centimetres in front of him and dies.   
The clerk smiles a polite, customer service smile, and Kris hopes that maybe his joke setup actually landed.   
"Pardon?"   
Kris lost his nerve. He could feel the sheer embarrassment colouring his face. What the hell was he thinking?   
"Uh."   
The cashier is looking at him, and Kris feels like maybe if the floor opened up into a gigantic black void and swallowed him whole, he would be okay with it. No, he actually thinks that maybe he wants that to happen. Right now. Immediately.   
"Debit, please."  
"Sure thing."   
Kris paid and left. He tripped on the second to last step and proceeded to curse to himself at medium volume the entire way home.   
And now, he hated himself. More than usual.   
Kris sighed, hitting his head against the tile wall. He was such a fucking idiot.   
Why did he even try to be funny? He was a complete and utter dork and always would be. No amount of humour would help it. And, this guy was way out of Kris' league.   
He was vaguely sure he remembered seeing the same guy before, he recognized the same polite customer-service smile. He just couldn't place where.   
He guessed it didn't really matter. All he had accomplished was making a total idiot out of himself in front of an attractive guy. Nice going, moron.  
Kris sighed, shut off the water, and stepped out of the bathroom. He could hear next door's TV at a ridiculous volume, and he sighed. 

Maybe if he spent the next twelve decades in bed, he wouldn't have to face that cashier again. Kris decided to test out this hypothesis and promptly placed himself face-first in his pillow. 

Absolute idiot, he thought.


	2. channel surfing and intrigue

Tao sat on the couch, mindlessly flipping through TV channels. Nothing was on. He could watch the same movie he'd seen three times already this week or a rerun of a show he had seen a million times. Then again, maybe not. 

Tao sighed. He thought back to the guy at the counter today, and how fucking weird he was. He had been doing inventory and when he heard the bell tinkle above the entrance, he'd looked upon a person who looked like a massive fucking idiot. He had a mullet. And wore yellow-tinted sunglasses. And he had on a goddamned Supreme hoodie. Tao had to suppress an eye-roll. A hypebeast in his store? It's more likely than you think. 

Tao took a break from his sarcasm-riddled thoughts and plastered on his best customer service face. Maybe he judged this guy too harshly because he smiled brightly at him. It was kind of a cute and dorky smile. Tao liked it. Sure he was dorky-looking and he dressed like shit, but at least he was nice. That wasn't something he could say for a lot of his customers, most of them were shitty and entitled "dog moms" who cared more about the feelings of their pet than the feelings of their children. 

He watched as the guy grabbed a bag of dog food seemingly at random and came up to the counter. Tao could tell he was panicking when they made eye contact, which he thought was kind of... sweet? Tao didn't think that anyone would ever freak out when they made eye contact with him like that. Tao rang in the purchase, and the guy in front of him mumbled something. Something about horses? What did horses have to do with buying dog food?

"Pardon?" 

Tao even tried to be polite. The word felt foreign and strange on his tongue. He had no idea what this guy had just said. Horses? 

"Uh." 

Tao watched the redness creep up his neck. Oh god, he'd embarrassed this guy. He didn't mean to, and he didn't know how to move on from here. Clearly, this guy had some form of social anxiety. Tao didn't want to upset him. God. Abort mission. 

"Debit, please?" 

"Sure thing." 

And that had been it. The guy paid, took his dog food, and left. Tao watched him stumble on the last step and felt a little bad for him. 

Tao could hear the shower next door. These apartments had such awful thin walls, Tao was pretty sure that he could hear every single thing that next door did whether or not he wanted to. Usually, he didn't want to, because there was a lot of clanging and shouty curses all the time. he turned up the TV to drown it out. Next door would just have to deal with the channel 6 news being on loud enough for them to hear. 

Tao wondered if he was ever going to see this guy again. Maybe he'd finally get to hear what the hell horses had to do with him buying dog food. Tao found himself looking forward to it.


	3. my dog can solve this

Kris stared at Trixie. Tell me how to not be a socially inept loser, Kris thinks. If he thinks really, really hard while looking at her, she can understand him. Right? 

Maybe not. All Trixie does is tilt her head and drool at him. As dogs are wont to do. Especially big German Shepards. Sometimes it seemed like he'd picked the dimmest and most dribbly dog he could have, but it makes him love her all the more. 

Kris sighed. He was still hung up on not being able to talk to that godforsaken cashier. what kind of idiot was he that he couldn't talk to a cashier? Even though that cashier was disgustingly attractive. Kris still remembers how his heart skipped when they met eyes because he had never seen someone with such pretty dark eyes like that before. And they had definitely never looked at him. 

Kris didn't think he was anywhere near this guy's league. After all, Kris was just... Kris. He couldn't imagine someone falling for him. He would never be someone's three in the morning thoughts or be the thing someone was looking forward to seeing when they came home after a long day. He would never be someone that anyone would look at and think was attractive, funny, outgoing, unique. Kris didn't know how he could be. He wanted that, but he could never get it, and he was already in over his head, and he felt like a weirdo, and this was exactly why nobody on planet earth wanted anything to do with him. 

Kris was staring at Trixie when he got an idea. 

Facebook. That social networking site with literally every single human worth noting on it. He had joined a few pet-related groups when he first got Trixie, and this guy worked in a pet store. Logically, he would be in some of those groups, right? And the store had a Facebook page, he would have to be on it. 

Kris had never gotten up to get his laptop so fast in his life. He felt a little bit stupid for not thinking of it before. 

After sorting through almost all of the groups he was a part of, he found it. The store's page. He clicked and scrolled and ten minutes later, there he was. The same cashier, holding someone's stupid and yappy little Shih-Tzu, smiling a megawatt corny smile, and they had tagged him. Huang Zitao. 

Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, you creepy android of a human being. 

Kris paused, mouse hovering over the name. Wasn't this just a little bit creepy? Looking up a cashier that smiled at him once in a pet store? God, was he a stalker? This was stalker-ish behaviour, wasn't it? Kris felt kind of, a little bit, like he was going to throw up. 

He clicked the link anyway. Nobody would know he did it if he didn't tell them, right? Facebook didn't have one of those weird UI boxes that told you who visited your profile last. Kris always thought those were a step closer to a weird creepy territory than just visiting someone's profile. 

Kris scrolled through Zitao's page and proceeded to learn way more about him than he had ever hoped to. He preferred being called Tao. He owned one of those little yappy dogs and loved it intensely. He had about a billion friends, and they all tagged him in posts all the time. He liked going to parties, they had the same taste in music. He liked wearing makeup, there were so many selfies of him in thick eyeliner, and Kris did think it looked nice on him. 

His mouse hovered over the "add friend" button. They knew exactly zero of the same people, but they had the same interests. And they had met once. Kris thought about it. That would be weird, wouldn't it, adding someone you met once. 

Kris closed his browser, and then his laptop. He didn't add Tao, but now he knew Tao was called Tao. And that was as far as he was willing to go at this stage in the game.


	4. elevators and friend requests

Tao wakes with the sound of his alarm and a groan. He had to work opening today, and every single time he had to be there at 7:30 in the morning, he questioned whether or not he actually needed this job. 

Tao picks up his phone and shuts off his alarm. There's a Facebook notification, and he doesn't bother to read it. New suggested friend. He didn't need new friends, he had too many that didn't really care all that much about him. He does take the time to scroll through the store's page and takes solace in the fact that there is absolutely nothing new. No customers whining at him in messenger or making bitchy posts. everything is fine, and the universe uncrosses its legs.

Tao takes a moment to think. He has time to shower before he goes in, but he doesn't know if he should.   
His dog, however, decides that he isn't going to be doing anything until he takes her outside.

Mya. Tao got her as a gift from his mom because his mom was concerned about him living alone. "You get so lonely, you need someone else there with you!" She'd said that for months. At first, Tao hadn't really liked her all that much, because she was little and yappy and kind of high-maintenance for a dog. But she'd grown on him. Now, she was his favourite dog, possibly in the entire world. 

Tao pulled on the nearest shirt and grabbed her leash. Thankfully, it seemed like absolutely none of the people who lived in this building actually worked for a living, so he would be alone and wouldn't have to talk to anyone. Those were Tao's other two favourite things. He clips Mya's leash onto her collar and heads for the elevator and relishes the silence. 

Well, for all of about ten seconds, because he hears his neighbour's door click open and sees a massive German Shephard come out, and its owner is baby-talking at it and sounds like a raging moron. 

Tao guesses he can't judge him for it. Stones and glass houses, after all. 

"Hey, hold the elevator!" 

Tao cringes. He knows that voice. Where had he heard that voice before? 

Mya barks and Tao punches the front-close button about six times, but of course, the door doesn't close and now he's stuck with his fucking neighbour and- 

Tao nearly stops breathing. The guy standing before him is the same one from the pet store the other day. He looks like he's panicking and Tao can understand because he feels the exact same way. We live in the same building? 

The elevator closes with a ding. 

~~~~~~~

Work is dead. 

Tao expected as much, because it's a Wednesday, and it's almost gone eight. There's a group of dumb teenagers looking at the fish, but Tao knows that they aren't going to end up buying any because teenagers are broke and irresponsible. He pulls out his phone and looks through his suggested friends list, and he sees the same guy as earlier. His neighbour. 

Fuck off, Mark Zuckerberg, you weird alien. How does Facebook even know we know each other?

How on earth this guy managed to become part of Tao's life after one encounter at a pet store buying dog food, he doesn't know. It's weird and strange but Tao scrolls through his page. His name is Kris. His dog's name is Trixie. They have the same taste in music, and they both seem to like going out to parties, judging by half of Kris' pictures. He has a bunch of friends, and some of them even know Tao. He sees a photo of them at the same party, Tao in the background, and he wonders if they've met before and he just hasn't noticed. 

Tao's finger hovers over the "add friend" button. He was suggested. It wouldn't be weird. And plus, it was Facebook, if the guy turned out to be a massive dingus, he could just unfriend him and pretend he never saw it. 

Tao added him and hoped it wouldn't end up weird.


	5. deflate your hype balloon

Kris is lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, when he hears his phone go off. 

God. It was probably his mom telling him that he needed to do his laundry. Kris did love his mother, but she was a little... much, sometimes. Kris didn't need to be reminded how to be an adult, he had been an adult for like, four years now, he'd lived on his own for at least three, he knew what he was doing. He had only fucked up laundry, like, twice. He could cook for himself as well, and most of the time it wasn't even burnt. Or undercooked. At least he wasn't eating fish. 

Kris reaches and grabs his phone, and nearly pisses his pants when he sees that it wasn't his mother telling him how to do the dishes, it was a Facebook notification that Tao had added him as a friend. 

Oh my god. Kris wasn't sure what to do. Tao had just added him, would he look like a weirdo if he added him back right now? Probably. Although, what person wasn't on Facebook, and what person didn't add people back when they saw someone added them? 

Kris shook his head. He was thinking about this too much. He added Tao back and set his phone halfway across the room so that any ensuing dorky embarrassment and regret could be dealt with later. 

He knows that overall, he's being stupid. Kris doesn't know how else to be, however. Not when it came to a cute guy he had just met and had clearly, displayed some sort of interest in him. 

~~~~~~

The next morning, Kris walks out of his apartment at nine in the morning on the dot, and heads to the pet store that Tao works at. He isn't sure how he managed to kind of fall for a guy who works in a PetSmart three blocks from his apartment. He also knows that he's probably being a little creepy, just a little. He's hoping to see Tao, but not banking on it, and he isn't going in with a specific plan because he knows that if he does he'll fail. Even if he doesn't, he knows he's probably going to fail. 

Kris stands outside the shop door. If anyone asks, he's going in for dog food. 

He opens the door after psyching himself up, and his hype balloon is promptly deflated when he sees a short, blond girl behind the counter, talking with another customer about deworming her dog. 

Kris walks out, and pretends that he's not disappointed. He doesn't see Tao that night when he leaves to go to a shitty dive bar with two of his friends. He also pretends that he isn't disappointed by that, either. 

Kris is entirely fine. Everything is normal. The universe uncrosses its legs.


	6. days off

Tao wakes up late, and thanks a god he isn't sure that he believes in that he has today off. It's his only day off this week, and it's long overdue. 

Mya is lying at the foot of the bed, and Tao doesn't want to disturb her, so he reaches blindly for his phone on his bedside table and checks his notifications. He smiles a little when he sees that Kris added him back. 

He doesn't know why he's so endeared by Kris. He's a dork who came into his place of employment once. Maybe it's because of that stupid horse thing. He wants to know what he said, but Tao doesn't feel like he can message him about it yet. And plus, he wanted to hear Kris say it in person. It would probably be funnier in person. 

Tao rolls over as soon as Mya hops off the bed to go and do dog things, whatever they may be. Tao doesn't want to posit, Mya is weird. Tao pulls his covers farther over his head and considers his options for the morning. Technically, he didn't have to do anything, but he should go and get groceries. He only needed a few things, but if he put it off he knew he would probably not end up doing it until half his fridge was empty and Mya was out of dog food. 

How does everything end up coming back to dog food? 

Tao groans, rolls out of bed and walks into his kitchen. His covers are still pulled around him, up over his shoulders. He always walked around wrapped in a comforter. He considers making a grocery list and thinks that it might be better if he does it after a shower and a clothing change. 

Hot water pelts him in the face, and he can hear next door's shower as well. Their bathrooms shared joining walls? Tao wasn't sure how he felt about that, and wonders why he hasn't ever noticed that before. Maybe because he wasn't looking for it. Tao wonders why Kris is up at ten-thirty and still in the house. Perhaps he works from home, and he doesn't have to get up very early. Tao posits that yes, Kris must work from home, as something incredibly lame. Like IT. Kris seems like he is into IT. And maybe he had a client he had to go and meet. Tao hoped that he would actually dress nice. No Supreme. No yellow sunglasses. Tao thinks that Kris would look nice in business casual, maybe even a suit? Definitely, Kris seemed like a suit kind of guy. 

Tao realizes that maybe he's thinking about Kris too much, and maybe he should be pretending that he can't hear kris' shower anymore, but he doesn't. 

Tao is only mildly disappointed when he walks to the elevator, grocery list in hand, and Kris is nowhere to be seen. He must have left already. 

Tao steps out onto the street and as he's walking, he passes his workplace. He thinks he sees Kris standing outside, and he thinks about going up to say hi, but he doesn't.


	7. finale

Weeks go by. Kris stops by the pet store almost every day, because he honestly doesn't care if he's being creepy. He just... needs to see Tao again. They haven't run into each other in the elevator, and the most communication they have is hearing the shower or the TV in the other apartment. 

"Tao?" 

The blond girl at the cash register looks confused. Kris wants to punch himself in the face. 

"Oh, the guy who wears makeup all the time? Yeah, we transferred him to another store, a few blocks away. We were understaffed there and-" 

"Excuse me?" 

"We transferred him?" 

Kris sighs, turns and leaves, doesn't say goodbye. The girl doesn't seem to care. He knew he'd regret being rude later, but right now he's frustrated and walking home and on top of it, of course it had to start raining. By the time that Kris gets back to his apartment block, he;s soaked to the skin and dripping all over the tile floor. he contemplates taking the stairs, to give him time to dry off, but he decides to take the elevator. 

"Hey, hold it!" 

Kris thumps his head on the stainless steel. Naturally. It was Tao, and he looked amazing, and Kris looked like a drowned rat. 

Fuck my entire life.

"Thank you." Tao says, as he steps inside. He's wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up and Kris has to stop himself from staring at his forearms. 

They stand in silence for a while. It's kind of awkward. Tao had his hair bleached almost white-blond, and Kris thinks it looks really good on him. Tao looks really good in general. Kris wants to punch himself in the face again, because he's being awkward and strange and he wants to say something, but the first time that happened, he made himself look like the biggest idiot on planet earth. 

"Hey." Tao says, looking up. 

"Hi." 

"That joke you told, when we first met. What was it?" 

"Uh. I said, a horse walks into a bar." 

"Yeah?"

"The bartender says, why the long face." 

There's silence, and then Tao laughs a little. "That's such a dad joke." 

"Yeah, isn't it?" Kris says. "I thought it was kind of... stupid, i don't know." 

There's silence again, a deafening silence, and Kris thinks he's shot himself in the foot when Tao looks at him again, and smiles. 

"Do you want to go for coffee? Like, right now?" 

"Uh. Yeah, sure, but it's raining-"

"I'll grab an umbrella. And you should probably change." 

"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great." 

The universe uncrosses its legs.


End file.
